\n\n“By almost any standard, President Donald Trump\u2019s rally on Tuesday evening in Milwaukee was a bizarre affair. The president went on a lengthy tirade about lightbulbs, toilets, and showers; touted war crimes; joked about a former president being in hell; and said he\u2019d like to see one of his domestic political foes locked up.
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I tried to capture some of the speech\u2019s disconcerting oddness in my write-up of the event<\/a>. In many ways, the remarks the president made were typical of him. And that provides the media with a challenge: Describing Trump as he really is can make it seem as if a report is \u201canti-Trump\u201d and that the reporter is trying to make the president look foolish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for media outlets that view themselves as above taking sides, attempts to provide a sober, \u201cbalanced\u201d look at presidential speeches often end up normalizing things that are decidedly not normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A brief report about Trump\u2019s Milwaukee speech that aired Wednesday morning on NPR illustrates this phenomenon. The anchor\u2019s intro framed Trump\u2019s at times disjointed ramblings as a normal political speech that \u201cranged widely,\u201d and the ensuing report (which originated from member station WUWM Milwaukee Public Radio) characterized his delivery as one in which he \u201csnapped back at Democrats for bringing impeachment proceedings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTrump was taking on Democrats on their own territory,\u201d the reporter said, when in reality Trump heaped abuse on them<\/a>, for instance, suggesting former Vice President Joe Biden is experiencing memory loss.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “NPR is far from alone in struggling to cover Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I wrote following a previous Trump rally<\/a> in Wisconsin last April, outlets including CBS, USA Today, the Associated Press, and the Hill failed to so much as mention in their reporting that Trump pushed dozens of lies and incendiary smears during his speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The irony is that the media is one of Trump\u2019s foremost targets of abuse. He calls the press the \u201cenemy of the people,\u201d<\/a> yet the very outlets he demeans regularly bend over backward to cover him in the most favorable possible light.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n